Air Canada says it is capable of checking identification in a private room away from the check-in counter, but said the real responsibility for security measures lies with CATSA, the Canadian Air Transport Security Agency. Not so, says CATSA. Greg MacDougall, a spokesman for CATSA, tells QMI that their guards are primarily looking for metal, weapons or other banned material, not ensuring that veiled faces match passport photos.
h/t EBD
“Air Canada says it is capable of checking identification in a private room away from the check-in counter”
Away from the check-in counter? Why can’t they just check my ID AT the check-in counter as they are already doing it anyway? What is the point? Are they talking about when they check it again when going through security after leaving check-in? But no, security is a whole different animal than the airline as mentioned, so what am I missing?
(Not that it matters as I check-in and print my boarding passes on-line or use mobile boarding passes anyway. Saves so much more time).
Just curious – are Sikhs allowed onto planes with their ceremonial daggers?
Sounds like a game of don’t-offend-muslims-hot-potato to me. Isn’t the CBSA supposed to verifying that the people entering the country have valid passports?
Bingo, and as well, valid photo id within Canada. In fact for all flights.
I would want to know if David Suzuki or Lizzie May was sitting beside me.
Link is broken.
CATSA is as useless an agency as TSA. Confiscating harmless items from Canadians in order to put on a show of security theatre (I was probably one more spoken word away from getting detained myself when I had to surrender a set of hex keys. What the heck kind of security risk are hex keys?). Now taking nudie X-ray pictures of us all, too. I really hate flying these days. I wonder if sanity will ever return to our culture.
I.M. writes, “I wonder if sanity will ever return to our culture.” In a word, no. At least not until the famine that Kate has written about.
I think some female politicians should be compelled to wear full burqa and niqab when in public — Pauline Marois, Kathleen Wynne, Elizabeth May, Olivia Ceausescu and George Smither(wo)man.
From now on, everyone should go to the airport in flowing gowns and headscarves. Make a big noise when someone asks you to remove your garments or attempts to molest you.
Play their game until it becomes unpalatable to them.
And then there’s this:
http://www.teamsters.ca/en/news/799/teamsters_union_and_garda_agree_on_interim_solution_for_suspend
“Isn’t the CBSA supposed to verifying that the people entering the country have valid passports?”
Er, no. CBSA is supposed to verify the status of any person trying to enter Canada. CBSA has nothing to do with airport security.
Pre-boarding security is a CATSA problem. And a basic rule of security – pactised by even the most elderly commissionnaire – is to ensure someone actually matches their ID. If CATSA isn’t doing that, it should be fired outright and replaced with an agency that will.